Blackout
by Singer of Time
Summary: Chell always had a hard time sleeping...and it wasn't hard to know why. Another Portal drabble.


((AN: Yeah, another (very short) Portal drabble. x3 I just have too much fun thinking about the game moments and how it would shape the protagonist's life. In this case, I had to bet that Chell had insomnia long after she was freed; not just because of nightmares, but because she seems to have blacked out a LOT during the course of the games. x3 I wouldn't want to sleep either if I felt it'd take years off of me.))

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Blackout

There were a few things that Chell had a hard time getting used to after her escape from Aperture. They were all seemingly simple things that most other humans never had trouble with.

Sleep was one of them.

Her insomnia wasn't just because of the trauma that she'd suffered, testing non-stop in the facility hour after countless hour, and encountering things that eventually made up the majority of her jarring night terrors. It had been partially of a habit forced upon her; sometimes when she closed her eyes she could still smell the adrenal vapor keeping her body energized though her mind was long weary and tired. Sleep came in short, brief bursts, never too deep, and never safe for long. As it was in the test chambers, as it was ever so often outside.

Another part of it was, whenever she _did_ sleep deeply, it always seemed that she found herself in a very different place with so much time lost.

The first time she awoke from out of nothing, it was at the beginning of _Her _tests. With little to no memory of how she got in that pod-shaped bed, she was pushed into a thankless world of survival. She'd fought, she'd puzzled, she'd broken away, and she'd succeeded.

The second time was to a garbled electronic voice in a ruined Relaxation Vault, drowsy and half-stunned from many years of sleep in stasis. She'd been taken into a very different Aperture, slowly becoming buried under the relentless march of Nature. Chell had pressed on with the memory of _Her_ defeat in her mind, the promising glimpse of freedom only just out of her reach. So close, and yet, always so much further away...

The third time was to pressing silence and flickering darkness. Dirty water beneath her, dripping, close and far off, with thundering echoes of breaking machines somewhere above. She'd opened her eyes to look up to a dangling, broken elevator, a black bird flying away, and so many pieces of a shattered Aperture from long ago. Testing her sore muscles and the portal device, walking slowly out of the bottom of that shaft and into the yawning caverns, her heart lay heavy in her chest, head spinning, stomach churning. She was fighting to set her focus back, recovering from the betrayal of a friend, and unsuspecting of the truths she'd find in this underworld.

The fourth time was no less full of ache, inside and out. Chell had breathed clean, controlled, recycled air into fiery lungs. Her head hurt, muscles struggling to bend to her will, her body having been battered around from a battle...an explosion that could (should, would) have killed her...the airless void of outer space...the pleading voice of a Personality Core wrenched from her grip...

Mustering her almost endless strength, she'd immediately pushed herself up to meet the curious eyes of two robots, and then the multitude of panels that mirrored Her moods...and then, _Her._ The one who'd tested her, manipulated her, tried to break through her wall of silence...

And then...and then, let her go.

Chell rode the escape lift upward, an optimistic but melancholy song at her back, and eventually met the blinding light of the sun. Her head was swimming, and she had felt that she would faint again...but she fought to hold onto consciousness lest the moment be wrenched away like so many times before. She had to _move._

She'd stayed awake...and she'd walked on through golden wheat fields, sparse forest, and eventually the cracked remnants of humanity, for...how long? A day...two...not even she knew. This time it was her body that wanted sleep, while her mind was restless. Eventually, she did succumb under cool shade and cleansing rain.

And the fifth time...the fifth time, and every time thereafter, she was right where she'd been before, with perhaps only a few hours lost this time. Outside. _Free._

It would still take Chell a long time to get used to sleep. She'd sometimes wonder how much time passed before she gave up guessing and just kept living.

Insomnia to many was a curse. To her, she'd decided, it was a forced but bright reminder that time could never be taken from her again.


End file.
